After more than a week, I still can't write about La La Land. I've talked about the film on three podcasts, raved about it to anyone who'll listen (and some who won't), and have begun mentally scoring mundane activities to "Someone in the Crowd". Maybe my thoughts on Damien Chazelle's transcendent homage to musicals (and to the town that makes, breaks, and remakes dreams) won't coalesce into words because the film is too big for them. You don't think about La La Land. You experience it. You feel it. You accept the tragic, everlasting love of Gosling and Stone as gospel and sing their songs as hymns. The movie opens with a showstopper and ends with a fresh start. In between is the swinging, candy-coated, mirror universe of Chazelle's equally phenomenal Whiplash, which also confronts spiritual compromise in the arts. Where that movie glimpsed Hell, La La Land delivers cinematic paradise.
Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #178 to hear Ian sing La La Land's praises with Keeping it Reel's David Fowlie!